My apologies, although I doubt it would make too much of a difference, the actual domain for connecting is m1.escargot.log1p.xyz.
I saw you mentioned ports earlier, the ports used here are outgoing 1863 and 443, TCP if that helps any.

Some other suggestions to further diagnose:

Enable the logging function by clicking the Tools menu in Messenger, then Options, Connection category, Advanced Settings button, and selecting the Save a log of my server connections to help troubleshoot connection problems option. The file it creates will be MsnMsgr.txt in your My Received Files folder (usually in [My] Documents). You can upload it in a reply, but I would start by searching the log for 80072ee7.

sorry for me to break in, but Windows Messenger uses m1.escargot.log1p.xyz;35.185.201.91:1863, this is surprisingly easy to understand, so lets break it down: hostname;ip_of_host:port, already we have what it means, but a hostname is the URL without http:// or https:// at the start, so this would look like m1.escargot.log1p.xyz, then we move to the hostname’s IP, normally, when Windows Messenger checks the Registry, specially HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\MessengerService. the value Windows Messenger needs to be changed so you can actually logon to Escargot is “Server”, by default, it’s set to messenger.hotmail.com, pretty sure everyone knows that’s wrong, this value will be changed to the before mentioned m1.escargot.log1p.xyz, after that logon, you won’t notice it, but if you’ve actually followed on with this, you may still have Registry Editor open, now if you now check the Server value, you will see it changed to m1.escargot.log1p.xyz;35.185.201.91:1863, great, you can now connect to escargot without having to change the HOSTS file, also, incase you did not get it, Messenger will resolve the address, if your still asking “whats a port”, please look at the post i’ve replyed to.